


if you wound a prince

by brophigenia



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Boarding School, Disappearances, Frottage, Grinding, Guess Who's Back, Lovecraftian, M/M, Mystery, Picnic at Hanging Rock AU, Victorian Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-29 16:36:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19023763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brophigenia/pseuds/brophigenia
Summary: you must kill him.Or, the Picnic At Hanging Rock AU no one asked for and I decided to write anyway.(AKA, the Raven Boys attend Aglionby College in Australia sometime in the vaguely-Victorian era. Jiang is the new boy in the dormitories, and the Gangsey run off to slipspace. With sexy, if a bit Lovecraftian, results.)





	if you wound a prince

**Author's Note:**

> Marathoned the Picnic at Hanging Rock miniseries on Prime and then this happened. What a way to jump back in, huh? Yeah, I don't know either. What the fuck.

_ and i called for my father  _

_ but my father had died  _

_ and you told us fortunes  _

_ in american slang _

***

“Promise me,” Ronan said, balanced barefoot atop the highest peak of the Rock, staring down upon Gansey and Noah and Adam with the intensity of a demon, the regality of a god, too bright to look at too closely against the backdrop of the blood red sky. Everything felt sideways and inside out. “Promise me.” He repeated, and then went through the Rock, Adam close behind, followed by Gansey, who stopped for just half a second before he plunged headfirst into the hole that had appeared where before there had been none, whirling and whooshing and unknowable. 

He mouthed something Noah could not see and then was gone, too, like the others. 

Noah stepped forward, one hand outstretched, and rushed to follow. 

***

Aglionby College was an upright sort of place, the kind of posh boys’ school that attempted to recreate Eton and failed miserably at it, though there was no one around for thousands of miles who’d know that. It was a blight upon the Australian countryside, a mansion fighting in vain not to be swallowed up by the heat and the encroaching wild foliage that grew not like vines of ivy but like floodwaters rushing over the levees. 

In short, for a young man of good breeding who had been raised in civilized society: hell. 

Jiang Hu stepped from what passed for a first-class carriage into the Australian dust, which rose up to coat his dark clothes like a spiderweb, filmy and fine. With his sleek hair and sharp eyes the color of jet and wide shoulders, he seemed the exotic prince from a penny dreadful novel come to life, appearing from the ether at the crack of dawn on an otherwise-unintelligible Thursday morning to set the doldrums astir. 

The boys crowded the windows of the third floor, where their dormitories lay. The seniors had knocked their underclassmen counterparts aside so that they might receive the best view of the newcomer, Declan Lynch dead center in the largest window gowned in his nightshirt.

Above them, framed as saints in the attic window, four junior boys watched Jiang’s arrival with blank masks for faces, murmuring to each other something that Jiang could not make out and would not have understood even if he could. 

“Welcome to Aglionby College, Mr. Hu.” The headmaster greeted him from the mansion’s front walk, raking appraising eyes over his newest charge. “We know you will find your tenure here to be most instructive.” 

“Quite.” Jiang responded, his wry tone belied by his own blank mask expression.

In the window, Declan Lynch had gone, left the gawking to the younger set and surrendered his superior view to Tad Carruthers, who treated the vacated position as if it were manna from on high that signaled Declan’s approval or some such shite. Underclassmen were tiresome beasts, distasteful and arrogant. 

The new boy’s tie pin had been capped in a diamond that glinted like treasure in the early morning sunlight. It was gaudy, and ostentatious, and Declan could not forget the sight of it for the rest of the day, driven to distraction over it during history, calculus, and classic literature. 

_ Jiang Hu.  _

***

“You  _ are  _ a flossy thing, then, aren’t you?” Jiang breathed, and smiled with all devilish delight even at the thought of his own damnation, swinging one well-muscled leg over Declan’s lap like he might the back of a particularly well-bred horse. Wool-trousered instead of seamed-leathered, but the feeling was the same; power, with a great big beast between his thighs at his command. Declan Lynch was broad-shouldered in his fine jacket and crisp Eton collar; he made a lovely picture, especially when Jiang smoothed his lapels and leaned in to nip at his lower lip playfully. 

Declan clutched him close like if he held on tight enough they would never be able to disentangle themselves. He imagined that, imagined living for the rest of his life with Jiang soldered to his front, chest to chest and cheek to cheek.

There could be worse things. 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m bang-up,” Declan muttered, and swallowed down Jiang’s amused laughter like it was an ice from the parlor at Menzie’s. 

If he couldn’t have the rest of his own natural life, Declan would settle for this, a full semester, or nearly, of ducking into every empty corridor and bedroom they could find for a quick one. 

***

“Christ’s  _ blood!”  _ Miss Sargent swore, bawdy and horrified in a way that Declan felt intimately, thrumming in his stomach and swarming like flies in his head.  _ Bodies,  _ he thought to himself as he rushed numbly to where her lamp swung back and forth in her shaking hand, a bright point of illumination upon the rock.  _ Bodies,  _ and none of them living, maggot-covered and horrible.  _ Hail Mary, blessed among women,  _ he recited, the words making a loop in his mind as he came to stand at Miss Sargent’s side. 

At first he thought he’d been correct; at first he could not make sense of what lay before their feet, but then a long moment passed of him staring down upon Noah Czerny’s half-naked form and Declan was counting the boy’s breaths, each metronomic rise and fall of his sunburnt chest, even as he was backing away. “Ronan!” He bellowed, something like hope but more hysterical, more frantic, coming to life in his chest.  _ “Ronan!”  _

“Go for help!” Miss Sargent snapped at him, the spell broken as she fell to her knees and propped Noah’s head up on her lap, tapping at his cheek to try and rouse him. “Go, now!” 

***

Declan laid back on the grass, closing his eyes and reveling in the feeling of the sun upon his face. He could care less about the Rock, with its miasma of native terror and imbalance. Himself, he preferred the orderly gardens of London any day of the week, or perhaps the thoroughly American wilderness to be found in the Appalachians, a place just as ancient but not quite so bafflingly  _ useless.  _

In the distance, away from the napping, lazy pack of them, Ronan’s voice could be heard rudely convincing Professors Greenmantle and Whelk to allow them a closer look a the Rock.  _ Them  _ being Gansey, Czerny, and Parrish, of course. It didn’t surprise Declan. The only surprise about the whole thing was that Miss Sargent hadn’t been tucked up into the drag like a stowaway or dressed in some poor frosh’s spare uniform to be passed off as a scholarship student. 

“Must you always be so  _ difficult,  _ Ronan?” Declan called out, drawling, and did not open his eyes. 

“Go to hell, Declan.” Ronan replied, low and testy as ever. “This is  _ important.”  _ Gansey took over convincing then, and Declan rolled onto his stomach, having long discarded his coat, feeling the sun warm his back through his thin shirt. 

It was a good day for a picnic. 

***

“Where  _ are  _ they?” Declan growled, slamming Professor Greenmantle against the wall of the headmaster’s office with force. He was no schoolboy in that moment but a man grown, easily pinning the bookish man to the wood paneling as easily as one might a butterfly to an underclassman etymologist’s display board. He was a man, and a Lynch, and it came out in his sharp Irish consonants, his privileged-but-roughshod upbringing stark against that of his peers. He and his brothers may have boasted one of the largest fortunes at Aglionby, but they were not Ganseys. Niall Lynch had been a nameless urchin before he’d become  _ Niall Lynch,  _ rattling his way over bogs and cobblestones to build a fortune.  

“I don’t know!” Greenmantle fairly shrieked, trying to shake Declan off but failing miserably. “They went— they wanted to sketch the Rock! You lot were asleep! We thought—  _ I  _ thought—“ in disgust, Declan dropped him and stepped sharply back, once more under control of his strength and his speed and his malice. 

“Mr. Lynch,” Headmaster Child sighed. “I would appreciate your leaving Professor Greenmantle and I to discuss the events of the day in privacy. Thank you.” It was an order that did not have to ask to be followed; Declan strode from the headmaster’s office in the kind of red rage so typical of his bloodline, Irishmen with morningstars for fists. 

“Lynch.” Jiang said, hidden in an alcove with its window open to let his cigarette smoke escape. “Come here.” Another order masquerading as a request, but Declan slipped into the alcove as easily as some beguiled Scotsman might go underhill in one of the old songs that Declan’s mother had always sung to all three of her boys. Ronan had loved those kinds of stories the best, to the point that Declan had tried to convince him that he was a true changeling, left by the Folk to eat them out of house and home and annoy them all to death. 

Even at six, Ronan had been so sure of himself that he couldn’t be persuaded of his supposed magical heritage; instead he’d accused  _ Declan  _ of being the changeling, the outsider. The truth of it had hit too close to home then, and remembering it even ten years later had him wincing. 

“Give me one.” He said, nodding towards Jiang’s breastpocket where he knew a silver cigarette case was concealed alongside a matchbook. 

Jiang didn’t hesitate, plucking the case from its pocket with nimble fingers and sticking the second cigarette into his mouth so he could light it and hand it off to Declan, as intimate as a kiss might be. 

Declan didn’t care much for cigarettes, but it seemed the thing to do, even if holding it drew attention to the way his hands were trembling along with the rest of him. He’d not changed out of the clothes he’d worn to the picnic; the knees of his trousers were red-orange with dust. 

***

“Odd,” Gansey said, three rows ahead in the drag, as they entered the park, the Rock looming ahead like fistsfuls of stone that had been stacked and soldered together by some angry, artistic god. “My watch’s stopped.” 

“Mine, too,” Parrish frowned, tapping at its battered face. He carried a busted-up watch but wore it on a golden chain, just another of the small ways he was set apart from the boys who  _ weren’t  _ on scholarship. 

“It must be the magnetic properties of the Rock.” Whelk said bracingly, examining his own watch. “It’s alright, though. Men made it a long time before the invention of the pocketwatch, and I expect that we will survive an afternoon.” 

***

“My brother and his friends, they… disappeared.” Declan said, trying it out before the mirror, practicing what he might say to people who asked in the coming months and years, for people  _ would  _ ask. Declan had had two brothers, and then been shipped off to Australia to lose one of them to the Aboriginal abyss. It would be something he could not escape. He could not hide from it. In the mirror his mouth trembled. His eyes grew wet, and his vision distorted until he could see Ronan, there before him, a cruel trick of the mind. 

He punched the spectre, relishing terribly in the violent, awful sound that the glass made as it shattered under his fists. Relishing in the pain of it, the satisfaction that came from wiping his eyes with his bloodied, glass-speckled hand and smearing scarlet across his face like he was some savage, straight from Sir Walter Raleigh’s  _ Discovery of Guiana.  _

“Where  _ are _ you?” He whispered, breath hitching unevenly. 

***

Noah Czerny was a ghost, tucked up into a lavishly-appointed bed in a guest room Ashley’s family’s fortress of country home. He was feverish, cheeks bright red while the rest of him was bone white, though the wound high on his cheek was black, the bruise purple-edged. 

“Has he said anything?” Declan bit out, clasping his hands behind his back to disguise how they trembled. He wanted to snatch Czerny from the bed and  _ shake  _ him until he gave a satisfactory explanation, or confession, or  _ anything. _

_ (Where is my brother?!  _ he wanted to scream, over and over, and not stop. Ronan was  _ his  _ charge.  _ His  _ brother.  _ His  _ responsibility, and no one else’s. Either Ronan would be found, or Declan would… he would…) 

“Not much. He says he doesn’t remember.” Chief Inspector Beck grimaced, all Outback vowels and rude manners and  _ incompetence.  _ Declan  _ shook  _ inside. It was not enough. Nothing would be enough, until his brother was returned home. 

(One way, or another.)

“Ronan,” Noah whispered from the bed, hands curling in the coverlets. They were bandaged from tip to wrist. Miss Sargent had said he had scraped them raw by the time they’d found him, the only injury besides the one on his cheek.  _ Like he tried to claw his way out of a coffin,  _ she’d whispered, unable to look at Declan when she said it, conscious of the way he was falling apart at the seams. 

“Where are they?” Declan said aloud, even as Noah slipped into another feverish sleep. Ashley appeared at the door bearing a basin of fresh water and a stack of clean cloths to daub at his clammy, sweat-slick skin. 

She brushed her arm against his as she passed, and he thought of all the garden parties he’d attended only for the chance to sneak off with her and kiss until their lips were swollen. She tasted of claret and rose petals always; Jiang tasted like blood, iron-sharp and vital and  _ alive. _

“He needs to rest,” Ashley said, a cool reproach and an order all in one. Beck snapped his heels together and nodded at her as he left, murmuring a courteous  _ G’day Miss Beauchamp.  _ It left them alone, the three of them: Noah, the ghost, Ashley, the nursemaid, and Declan, the denied supplicant. 

“Declan.” Ashley said, and though her tone was sharp her eyes were soft, pitying. It made his teeth grind. “I’m sorry about your brother.” 

“He’s coming back.” Declan responded, unable to keep the desperation from creeping into the edges of his petulant, childish retort. 

“Wait for me,” Noah mumbled, still asleep, and tossed his head on the pillow restlessly. His pale yellow hair was so wet with sweat it seemed black in the low lamplight. “Don’t leave me.” Ashley brushed a soaked strand off his forehead with a touch both maternal and adoring.

“Send for me when he’s lucid.” Declan instructed, suffocating, and hurried out the door. 

***

“I want him  _ back,”  _ Declan said, savage and low, even as he matched his hips to Jiang and sealed their mouths together, tearing at Jiang’s buttons, mussing him with a deliberate kind of aggression. Pointed and harsh. Desperate. “I want, I want—“ 

All of a sudden Jiang was moving, turning them so that  _ Declan  _ was the one pressed to the wall, cheeks flushed like a girl’s and hands shaking where Jiang had pressed them up near his head, helpless as a sacrifice, pure-wooled as a lamb. “You’re  _ jealous,”  _ he breathed into Declan’s ear, taunting and  _ mean  _ and true. He’d not survived and thrived so long in British high society without becoming cruel, without finding the beauty inherent in all of humanity’s cruelties, but especially this kind. “They’ve escaped, and left you behind, and you’re so  _ jealous.”  _

Declan was gasping, raggedly, trying to form denials with his mouth but failing each time because Jiang had inserted a thigh between both of his and he was so hard in his fine striped trousers, straight from London, from the same shop that handled Eton’s uniforms. They should have all gone to Eton; Declan should never allowed them to be shipped off to fucking  _ Australia.  _ Shipped off like  _ convicts,  _ when they were only just the fatherless sons of the Lynch fortune and all that came with it. 

“Jiang,” he said finally, breathless and overcome and half-sick with it, out of his mind. Exhausted and starving for food, for pain, for pleasure, for  _ absolution.  _ He couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken Communion, couldn’t recall his last confession. 

“It’s alright,” Jiang hummed, sweet as a lullaby. “I hate them, too.” 

Declan shuddered, the instinct to deny it rising like bile in his throat, and came in his trousers, hips jerking in a stuttering rhythm against Jiang’s lithe thigh. 

He was left panting in the aftermath, drawn back against the wall so he could avoid the press of Jiang’s limbs against his, though he could not work up the strength to yank his wrists from Jiang’s soft-handed grasp. 

“Let me go.” He whispered, a plea. How pathetic he was. How terrible.  _ Jealous.  _ Yes. He burned with it, and felt shame like a tidal wave crashing over his head. 

“Declan,” Jiang said, like he was going to apologize. 

_ “Don’t.”  _ Declan warned, and tugged until Jiang released him, bruises blooming on his wrists that would be easily hidden beneath the cuffs of his shirts. 

***

“Take it off, Dick,” Ronan goaded, stripped to his uniform pants and nothing else, shoes and socks and shirt and jacket and that damned  _ tie  _ discarded into a careless heap. “Parrish, c’mon, quit being such a fucking choirboy.” It was vulgar, like everything about Ronan Lynch— and like everything else, it made Adam and Gansey both smile, all fondness. Noah was stripped off already, too, dreamy and excited, clinging to Ronan’s shoulders and gazing at them through his fine silvery eyelashes, prettier than any boy over fourteen had any right to be. 

They followed Ronan’s directives and his scandalous example, anyway, Adam neatly folding his clothes and settling them atop his shoes, though deep in his gut he knew that he’d not be back for them. Gansey was much more carefree as he stripped, leaving his shirt laying sprawled as if he’d just vanished from inside of it and it hadn’t yet noticed. 

“We’re going to go all the way up,” Noah said, grinning. “We can’t make our vow unless we’re all the way up.” 

“You’re ridiculous, Czerny.” Adam said, but laughed as he did to soften the disparagement in his words. 

“He’s right.” Gansey agreed, nodding. “Let’s go, chums. Excelsior!” 

Ronan’s eyes glittered like beetles, amused and predatory and devoted all at once. “Lead the way,” he invited, and tangled his fingers with Noah’s where they lay over his chest. 

***

“Gansey!” Miss Sargent was screaming, the handle of her oil lamp clutched tight in her left hand. “Adam! Ronan! Noah!” Her voice carried, echoing like a chorus of panicked angels as it reverberated over the stones, which were still hot to the touch from baking all day in the sun. Hot and  _ alive;  _ she’d never been on the Rock at night and found it even more terrible when all she could see were shadows and pits, nothing to mark her way. 

Declan couldn’t catch his breath; he remembered the look in Gansey’s eye when Miss Sargent was around, remembered the gleam and the amazement, the look of a man in love. Gansey wouldn’t have just…  _ left.  _ Wouldn’t have  _ run away,  _ like Lieutenant Gray was trying to insinuate now, nine days after the picnic with no bodies found. 

Ronan might have done something like that, but not the others. Not Gansey, lovestruck, or Adam, ambitious, or even Noah, fervent. 

They had not run away. 

“Ronan!” Declan bellowed, adding his voice to the chorus.  _ “Ronan!”  _

***

“Mr. Czerny.” Lieutenant Gray said, staring him right in the eyes. He seemed unwell, distracted and not-quite-present, in the parlor of his suite at the Menzie’s, waiting for his ship to come to port. Going home to his family estate, apparently. Recalled by his parents, who no doubt would smooth the whole mess over with a quick marriage to some irreproachable young lady. This was only Australia, after all; it wasn’t as if this mess had happened in the  _ real  _ world. Not in the mind of the Czernys, nor the rest of the  _ ton.  _ “You’ve not told me everything. You’re keeping secrets.” 

Czerny roused himself at that, eyes going sharp. “You’re right.” He said simply, and seemed another boy entirely. Seemed like the accounts of the boy he’d been before the picnic, hawk eyed and mocking and too brilliant for anyone’s good, much less his own. “I’m not.” 

“Where are they, Noah?” Gray asked, one last time. Once more, before Czerny embarked on his ship and would forever be gone, out of reach. The only one who could tell them what  _ exactly  _ happened at that Rock. 

“Gone.” Noah said, lips twitching into a humorless grin even as his eyes went back to their previous deadened, foggy state. He was no living thing, Noah Czerny. He was a ghost, like the other boys, only he was alone. For whatever reason, he’d never come back down off the Rock. Not really. 

Gray watched him go, leaving a trail of chilly air in his wake. 

***

“I saw Matthew packing.” Jiang said from the door of Declan’s room, quiet and neutral. Not asking a question. Making small talk, almost. 

Declan stood at the window, gazing out. His own trunk was packed, and his valise, too, lined up beside the bed with Ronan’s things neatly packed up and lined up alongside them, though  _ his _ luggage showed the wear and tear of a young man careless with his possessions, no matter how fine. 

He could almost see the Rock from his window— could see the jagged suggestion of it, violating the skyline. 

“Yes.” Declan said after too-long a beat. He did not turn to look at Jiang. “He’ll attend Eton in the fall. The headmaster has written out my diploma. We will not be coming back after the Easter holiday.” 

“So soon?” Jiang murmured tonelessly, his mouth dry, both taken by surprise and not at all shocked. Not really. There was nothing here for Declan Lynch, nothing but mystery and the Rock and madness. 

(And Jiang.) 

Declan sighed, bending his head until his forehead pressed against the glass, as uncouth as he’d ever been in the presence of anyone who was not his father or his brothers. 

“It’s for the best.” He replied, equally as flat. He looked deflated from the back, perfect posture giving way to the weight of the world which had always rested on those broad shoulders. 

_ Whose best?  _ Jiang wanted to ask.  _ Not mine. Not yours.  _ But it would do no good. Declan Lynch was a martyr to rival Saint Sebastian, and he would never recover from what had happened here. He would never be himself again, would only ever be half of the man he’d once been, because he’d always measured his life in the growth and prosperity of his brothers. He’d lost half of himself when he’d lost Ronan, and now would do nothing but ensure that Matthew, at least, might be saved. 

“Look me up if you’re ever around.” He offered, an empty thing that fell stone dead between his mouth and Declan’s ears, unceremoniously polluting the air in the already-suffocating bedroom. 

“Of course.” Declan said, so soft he almost didn’t say it at all, and then there was nothing but the quiet  _ click  _ of the door closing behind Jiang, closing on his time in this place, closing on the Declan Lynch he’d been before the picnic and now never would be again. 

“Where are you?” Declan whispered, to his brother. To himself. 

_ *** _

_ you soon find  _

_ you have few choices _

_ i learned  _

_ the voices die with me  _

**Author's Note:**

> follow me @ brophigenia.tumblr.com


End file.
